Iran turns wrath on US, Saudi as attacks dead mourned

TEHRAN: Tehran hit out at Washington and Riyadh as tens of thousands attended the funerals Friday for those slain in the first attacks in Iran claimed by the Islamic State group.

“Death to America”, “Death to the Saud” ruling family, and “We are not afraid”, shouted the crowd gathered behind a lorry bearing the coffins of 15 of the 17 people killed in Wednesday’s attacks.

Burials were held in the provinces for the two others killed when gunmen and suicide bombers stormed Tehran’s parliament complex and the shrine of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Fifty people were wounded.

Nine people suspected of IS links have been arrested, a website close to the judiciary said Friday, as mourners paid their respects to those killed at a ceremony attended by newly re-elected moderate President Hassan Rouhani.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had initially played down the attacks, describing them as “firecrackers” that “will not have the slightest effect on the will of the people”.

On Friday, however, he turned his wrath for the attacks on the United States and Saudi Arabia, his country’s fiercest rivals.

“Such acts will have no other result than to reinforce hatred for the US government and its agents in the region, like the Saudi (government),” Khamenei wrote in a message of condolence to the families of the dead.

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani also attacked the United States and Saudi Arabia, which he called “a tribal state very far from anything like a democracy”.

US ‘alignment with terrorists’

In a speech at the ceremony, Larijani denounced US sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile programme.

The US “knows that the Revolutionary Guard and its Quds force are the most important regional forces fighting terrorists”, he said.

The imposition of such sanctions “demonstrates their alignment with terrorists in the region”, said the speaker, a moderate conservative.

But Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said on Thursday that “we still cannot judge that Saudi Arabia has had a role in this terrorist incident”.

The Mizanonline website, which is close to the judiciary, said nine people suspected of IS links were arrested, seven of them on Thursday night in Fars province and the other two on Friday morning in Kermanshah province, near the border with Iraq.